It has taken a few decades since the search started but we have finally discovered intelligent alien life or at least what remains of it on the planet Huyter in the Sner star system. The probe was sent after the spectroscopic analysis of this planet's clouds revealed a strong possibility of carbon based life being present on its surface. It took a decade for the data to come back to us even with our hyperdrive enhancements and the partial space jumps. And the wait was worth its weight in gold!
The drone was fitted with a standard XZ-640 camera and the video recorded and transmitted back reveals a lush green planet with forests all over the planet. The drone decided to plunge in in a less densely populated area lest it gets entangled in the flora....
No matter what I write, I will never be able to fully convey the spectacle that it is! Please watch the below footage to experience it for yourself .
[This second version is the same as above but with some colour and contrast enhancements; I could not decide which is better so I have uploaded both. Kindly let me know which one you like better.]
Hello everyone, hope you are doing fine. Thank you all for the constant support and encouragement. Here's a special AI assisted animation for your viewing pleasure with details on
How I did it:
Initial Run
I took this free to use image from pexels and cropped it. Then, I used it as an initial image in the disco diffusion notebook and choose the 3D animation mode to run with the following settings.
I was inspired by another video I had seen on reddit and my prompt is infact the same as that video and also many settings.
FILM interpolation
After it ran its course(I had it run over a couple of days - with breaks in between of course, thanks to the resume run feature) and generated around 340 frames. Then I made the video but it was very jittery, it looked like the frames were running back and forth. So, I decided to smooth it out using the FILM notebook which I had used earlier. It basically interpolates data between frames using AI.
I chose 60 frames per second for a smooth output and the result was a long smooth slow video. I thought of speeding it up while doing the final render but decided against it as this looks like a better fit for the small story I wrote above.
Upscaling the video
I had chosen 768 x 768 pixel resolution for the initial render in the disco diffusion notebook. I thought of making it at least 1080 x 1080. So, I headed over to pollinations.ai and used this tool to enhance the quality.
Both interpolation and upscaling took more than 90 minutes on Colab Pro with a P100 GPU. I don’t know if the interpolation will work with free Colab as more than 16 GB VRAM was used for interpolating.
Choosing an appropriate audio file
I initially thought of using AI generated audio too but then I ended up using a cc0 audio file from freepd.com; the audio file is called Night Vigil. I was quite pleased with the sync with my video.
Rendering the video
It was time to combine the video and audio. I chose HitFilmExpress to render the final video. I rendered an 'as is' version and also another version with auto level enhancements, basically with colour and contrast enhancements. I liked them both, hence uploaded them both. Please let me know which one you liked better.
DISCLAIMER
I do not have any financial interests in any of the products mentioned here. In fact, all of them are free to use except Google Colab Pro. This post is not a sponsored post. I have just noted the products that I have used for easy reproducibility in case someone wants to try the same.
Thank you for watching, I hope you liked the videos; see you in the next one!
Do you want to generate similar art with the help of AI (or maybe something entirely different)? It is quite simple to get started. You can get started here.
